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Harvard Book Store and Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics welcome Dartmouth College professor of government JULIE L. ROSE for a discussion of her new book, Free Time.

About Free Time

Recent debates about inequality have focused almost exclusively on the distribution of wealth and disparities in income, but little notice has been paid to the distribution of free time. Free time is commonly assumed to be a matter of personal preference, a good that one chooses to have more or less of. Even if there is unequal access to free time, the cause and solution are presumed to lie with the resources of income and wealth. In Free Time, Julie Rose argues that these views are fundamentally mistaken. First, Rose contends that free time is a resource, like money, that one needs in order to pursue chosen ends. Further, realizing a just distribution of income and wealth is not sufficient to ensure a fair distribution of free time. Because of this, anyone concerned with distributive justice must attend to the distribution of free time.

On the basis of widely held liberal principles, Rose explains why citizens are entitled to free time—time not committed to meeting life's necessities and instead available for chosen pursuits. The novel argument that the just society must guarantee all citizens their fair share of free time provides principled grounds to address critical policy choices, including work hours regulations, Sunday closing laws, public support for caregiving, and the pursuit of economic growth.

Delving into an original topic that touches everyone, Free Time demonstrates why all citizens have, in the words of early labor reformers, a right to "hours for what we will."

Praise

"With uncommon clarity and analytical rigor, Rose succeeds in making the issue of free time philosophically compelling—and she persuades the reader that free time is a matter of justice, which implies that a just state must guarantee citizens a fair share. Rose's arguments cut to the heart of daily life and rearrange our conventional wisdom." —Rob Reich, Stanford University

Julie L. Rose

Julie L. Rose

Julie L. Rose, a political philosopher whose work addresses issues of economic justice, is Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. In her new book, Free Time, she argues that all citizens are entitled to, in the words of early labor reformers, time "for what we will.” Her other current work examines the ethics of economic growth. She earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University, her B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University, and has held fellowships at Stanford University and Brown University. She lives in Hanover, NH.

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Event Series: Friday Forum

Harvard Book Store's Friday Forum series takes place on Friday afternoons during the academic year as a way to highlight scholarly books in a wide range of fields, with a particular focus on local scholars. Friday Forums take place at 3pm in Harvard Book Store.

Event Series: Ethics in Your World

The “Ethics in Your World” series, presented with Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, features leading thinkers taking on tough problems that matter to us all. Learn more about the Safra Center atethics.harvard.edu.

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